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Programming Idle

Can You Tell a Programming Language Inventor From a Serial Killer? (vole.wtf) 61

Posted by EditorDavid from the executables dept.
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: A new web quiz challenge visitors, "Can you tell a coder from a cannibal? A mathematician from a murderer? Try to spot who liked hacking away at corpses rather than computers."
One commenter on BoingBoing says the quiz brought back memories of doing IT recruitment in the 1990s. "After a few months at that job, I started to wonder if spending so much time staring at soulless equipment wasn't affecting people. Too many candidates were completely humorless, culturally clueless, or sporting a thousand-yard stare..."
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Can You Tell a Programming Language Inventor From a Serial Killer? More

Can You Tell a Programming Language Inventor From a Serial Killer?

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  • It is only OK if it is from multithread killer (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:39AM (#60985788)
    Serial execution is so 90s.

  • 70% of the time.

  • Diversity (Score:5, Funny)

    by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:55AM (#60985848)

    Programming Language Inventor

    Serial Killer

    Why can't you identify to be both at the same time . . . ?

    I am doing very well on the Serial Killer part, but the Programming Language Inventor is a real bitch and a half.

    • Re:Diversity (Score:4, Informative)

      by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @12:14PM (#60985908)

      You mean like Hans Riser ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • "Known for: ReiserFS, murder"

        ...What do you want on your tombstone?

      • He's only a singleton killer.

      • Re:Diversity (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tragedy ( 27079 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @12:48PM (#60986020)

        I was coming onto this thread to point out Hans Reiser as well. Of course, he does not fit exactly. He was a filesystem creator rather than a programming language creator. Also, he only committed the one murder, so not a serial killer. But he is someone who fits the theme.

        Of course, he seems to be something of an exception. I don't seem to hear about many open source programmers committing murders. Really, there are quite a lot of open source programmers out there, so it seems like we would hear about it more if many of them were committing murder. It may be much more likely to be news when it's the leader of a project like Reiser though. From my perspective, it's important to look at the actual numbers. It's a little hard find a direct statistic on the number of known murderers in the US. From what I can find that there are 180K+ people in prison for murder in the US, mostly in state prisons, but that's obviously not all the murderers since they do get released eventually. Based on actual murder rates and assumptions about how long a murderer might live after the murder, there could be anywhere from around 500K to 1 million murderers in the US. So, that would mean something like 1 in 330 to 1 in 660 people in the US is a murderer. It's hard to say for sure, but it seems like the murder rate among open source programmers is not that high. Among programming language creators specifically... Well, there are admittedly a lot of programming languages, but I'm not sure there are quite that many, so the statistics are tricky because of the small sample size.

        On the other hand, many serial killers operate for years or decades before they get caught. Contrary to the popular depiction of them, most of the ones that are caught are a long way from geniuses. Frankly some of them seem to be dumb as posts or at least very careless when you hear their life stories. Of course, it's almost impossible to tell if that means that there are undetectable genius serial killers out there or not.

        • Probably most murderers are drug gang members who have received little education. Not the programmer demographic.

    • Why can't you identify to be both at the same time . . . ?

      Randy Kraft [wikipedia.org], one of the people on the list, is both a programmer and a serial killer. But he is not a language designer.

  • Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kisai ( 213879 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @11:55AM (#60985850)

    I actually got 8/10 on that. (one woman and one man incorrect, the woman was a murderer, and the male wasn't)

    Here's the thing, face analysis is entirely subjective. Just like how AI can be trained to be biased, so do quizes like this. Had every image been a black person, chances are peoples own internal racism would make them wrong more often. As all the images are for light-skin, and mostly males, the two I got wrong looked older.

    But when you frame it from a "I'm a company HR person doing hiring..." think about all the internal biases individuals have. How do white male psychopaths end up running VC companies, and such. It's one of those things that perhaps we're no better than a computer when it comes to judging if someone we interact with is really mentally fit to do an activity.

    I've always been a fairly good judge of people, but that's based on their vices. People that tend to smoke, tend to be high-anxiety people, and stress out over petty things. People who talk dirty, all the time, regardless of social situation, tend to be very chaotic and don't believe rules apply to them. People who drink a lot, tend to either be very laid back or very violent, and you won't know which switch is flipped, so don't anger people when they're drinking.

    At best, someone with no vices (or at least doesn't talk about them,) likely has something to hide, or is just not a personal risk taking person. This is the thing you can observe on twitter a lot, people who demand attention to themselves are narcissistic, and probably trolls.

    • As a technical hiring manager, the one thing I would not tolerate was lying, if somebody claimed something on the interview and couldn't back it up then they were not working for me for long

    • Had every image been a black person, chances are peoples own internal racism would make them wrong more often.

      Right, we'd mark them all as programming language inventors.

    • Had every image been a black person, chances are peoples own internal racism would make them wrong more often

      Speculation does not count as evidence.

      • Speculation does not count as evidence.

        Haven't you got the notice yet? Speculation is PROOF. Who needs flimsy and malleable things like evidence?

    • I'm a company HR person doing hiring

      Strong evidence of a serial killer!

    • "At best, someone with no vices (or at least doesn't talk about them,) likely has something to hide" Everyone has something to hide. You mention face analysis being open to bias, I'd say a vice-based-analysis is just as open to bias. Some people may be happy to talk about their vices, or they may be using a fake/exaggerated personal disclosure to gain your trust. Some people maybe be ashamed of their vices. Or maybe they've overcome it and don't want to discuss it. Or maybe they don't want to discuss it
    • 7/10 since I'm terrible with faces. But since the expected value of random guesses would be 5/10, I'd say that's pretty bad. But as I said, me and faces, that's just to be expected.

  • Hans Reiser has entered the chat.

  • ... or sporting a thousand yard stare.

    Definitely a language inventor. Serial killers are usually quite personable, charismatic and able to convince strangers to get into their car [netdna-ssl.com]. Of course, it could also be a left wing hipster [atlbusinessjournal.com].

  • Leaves the language alone is a lot less likely to kill innocent programs.

  • I need an example of a complete and utter waste of human attention, so useless, it makes people waste more energy, just to be angry about it.

    I'd also need a profile picture of the writer.
    For my entry on "cancer, other forms".

  • At least it should have been an AI doing it, so it can learn how to not get spotted as a serial killer.

  • This is a funny meme, but it's definitely not new. I hope anyone who hadn't heard of it before enjoyed it, since you're today's lucky 10,000 [xkcd.com].

    This 2006 Guardian article [theguardian.com] suggests the original site was on malevole.com, for which archive.org has captures going back as far as 2003, although none of the captures I looked at appeared to have any content. This Reddit thread [reddit.com] says the site used Flash, and the sites malevole.com and vole.wtf appear to be possibly related.

    My best guess: this quiz was formerly a Flash

  • To be fair, there is some overlap, at least between murderers and file system designers. See: Hans Reiser [wikipedia.org].

  • Ooooh we're going to repeat that trope again? Boring. Old. Incorrect.

  • Can you tell a filesystem inventor from a wife-murderer?

  • Programmer isn't on this list [bigthink.com]. When this topic came up, the last serial killer that I could think of was a cop. That fits the model of "jobs that give you an opportunity to kill and get access to victims".

    Programmers may be "odd" and even the "quiet guy who lives next door", but we're not on the serial killer or even psycho list. So. If you were feeling insecure about yourself due to this story, stop.

    Fortunately, such killers are actually pretty rare so there may not be enough data for a valid sample.

  • Is this a joke in bad taste about Reiser FS ?

  • Seeking someone who is;

    * Organised
    * Good attention to detail
    * Probably single and living alone
    * Able to take the long view on projects
    * Willing to go the extra mile to get things just right

    All the attributes you would expect in someone who.... designs programming languages!

    And also the attributes a successful serial killer would need to avoid being caught.

  • I prefer those psycho killers.
    Qu'est-que c'est?

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